


With All the Grains of Babylon

by RedHairGreenStockings



Category: Boardwalk Empire
Genre: Family, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-12
Updated: 2014-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-16 23:42:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5845480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHairGreenStockings/pseuds/RedHairGreenStockings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre Series: Richard is drafted and talks to his father about war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With All the Grains of Babylon

In the night, often their father couldn’t sleep, so he’d go out onto the porch with a pipe between his teeth and a bottle of bourbon between his thighs. The smoke was silver in the lantern light.

“Pa? Can I talk to you?”

Caleb Harrow turned around, taking in the spindly figure leaning against the screen door playing with the draft card between his fingers. Richard always needed something in his hands; it made him good at the work. Christ, when did he get so tall?

 

“You should be in bed, boy.”

“Can’t sleep, sir.”

He nodded, patting the steps beside him.

“Me either.”

Richard knew that. His father was almost always tired. Sometimes it made him mean. His mother said it was because of bad dreams. 

“Does that come with the job of being a soldier?” Richard asked as he sat.

“For some of us, I reckon, but not for others.” He took the card from him and read: “Richard Harrow, Plover, Wisconsin. Hair, blond. Eyes, blue.” His chuckle was like gravel being kicked up by horses’ hooves.

“You think there’s any chance it’s not meant for me? That’s what Emma says.”

Richard’s smile was not the toothy beam his father remembered, already with just enough hardness to be noticeable, hardness that hadn’t been there the day before.

“Your sister best accept what’s to come and do it right soon, as should you.”

“She keeps saying how much she wants to come too.”

His father looked at him sternly, waving the smoke from his pipe away in an aggravated gesture he used whenever he didn’t want to hear whatever his wife or children had to say—which was often enough.

“High time the two of you learned once and for all that you are not the same person.”

“She’s the fighter…I think we both know that.”

When his father looked down at him with steely eyes, Richard couldn’t keep his gaze. He even flinched, though neither of them could remember the last time he’d been beaten. Instead, he felt the gnarled, red hand come to rest against the back of his neck.

“Look at me, boy.”

Caleb tilted up his son’s head and found tears glistening in the green eyes he’d inherited from his grandmother. The old man swallowed past a stone in his throat. There was so much child left there still, so much that would be torn out and thrown to the wind, and not even on the soil of his own country. He rubbed his hair like he was petting a large dog.

“I know I been rougher on you than I have on her all these years,” he said, at once firm and gentle. “I won’t deny it, nor will I apologize for it, but you’re a Harrow and we’re all fighters. Richard…son, don’t you understand? I been trying to prepare you for this all your life. It isn’t enough to write stories and paint pictures. The time comes when every man is called on to fight in one battle or another. May not even be his own fight, but it’s still his duty to complete the task he’s asked to carry out. It’s all life is, just a battle to keep the things that are important to us. I fought to keep this country together for the family I knew I’d have. Now you’ll take the fight from me; there’s honor in that and don’t you forget it.”

Richard shook his head. He was struggling to keep looking into Caleb’s eyes. 

“I’m really scared, Pa.”

He expected to be berated for this admission of weakness, and started when the hand clasping his head reached down and drew him close to his father’s body.

“’Course you are, boy. Only a fool wouldn’t be and you’re smart as a steel trap, always have been.”

“I’m not brave enough to do this. I don’t have any courage.” Richard’s voice grew bitter and angry as he struck his leg helplessly with his fist. Caleb gripped the hand in his own and unclenched the sweating, shaky fingers.

“I’m gonna tell you something now that nobody told me when I went off to war,” he said softly. “You’re gonna be scared from the minute you leave this porch til the minute you get back to it again, and maybe for a long time afterward; doesn’t mean you don’t have courage. Bravery doesn’t mean feeling no fear; it’s being consumed by fear and still doing what’s right.”

Richard nodded. Caleb pulled him closer and rubbed his back.

“Now, what do your Ma and I always tell you to do when you’re afraid?”

“To find the cause and understand it,” he rattled off by rote.

“So what is it?”

Richard laughed nervously.

“I don’t want to die.”

Caleb visibly flinched at the words despite his best efforts. It was not something any man wanted to hear from the mouth of his babe.

“Being afraid of death doesn’t make it any less likely. But really…there’s nothing to fear from it if you consider. If you believe your mother then you’ll simply wait at the Right Hand for her and your sister. If I’m right, then neither of us will ever know.”

The two of them shared the same tense, breathy laughter. Richard could never remember anything in his whole life that could make Caleb slap his knee and guffaw. His father took the bottle and held it out to him. Richard looked sharply at him.

“Really?”

“If you’re gonna fight you should learn to drink too.”

He took it apprehensively, took a swig in the bobbing, quick way he’d seen Caleb do—like a hawk swallowing back a shred of meat. His throat was set on fire and he choked, but managed to get it down. Somehow he didn’t mind it. They passed it back and forth between them until Caleb noticed his eyelids going to half-mast. After a few minutes, Richard exhaled and spoke slowly, looking out onto the blackened fields with a furrowed, questioning brow.

“You said I was going to be scared even after I got back…Scared of what? It’ll be over. I’ll be home. All this here…all of you—” He gestured out where his eyes were glued in the middle distance. “I could never be scared here. This is my home.”

His father looked at him and suddenly seemed so, so sad. His shoulders slumped, as under a great weight. His words faltered.

“You…you gonna change,” he said thickly. “You’re gonna see things…do things. You’re gonna have to reach down deep and find a dark thing inside. That’s the scary thing, and it’s a hard thing to place down from your back.”

Richard felt a cold sweat in the cold night. He was scared even then, just hearing his father talk so, but more scared that one of them might begin to cry. He wanted to ask for another swig of the bourbon.

“Don’t wanna hurt nobody, Pa,” he mumbled into his hands.

“I know.”

Richard looked up.

“When did you stop being scared?”

Caleb chuckled and looked at the bottle. Ask me again when you come back; maybe it’ll happen by then. The words rose to his lips, but he stopped them. He couldn’t leave his son hopeless. Instead he said:

“When your Ma said she’d marry me.”

You rotten, lying old son of a bitch. But the smile he got was the same one as the infant he’d rocked in his arms and that made it almost worth it. Caleb shifted his body to place both arms around his skinny kid.

“If you come home scared all you got to do is come on back to us and I’ll be here to talk you through it like always, all right? And no matter what happens, I’m proud of you.” Then, as if he were pouring cold water over his head to sober up, he gently pushed Richard away. His expression betrayed nothing. “That’s enough talking. You get to bed now, ‘fore your sister feels the space in the bed and wakes up too. Chores tomorrow.”

“Yes sir.”

He got up from the creaking planks like a newborn foal, all legs and scramble. The two men regarded each other for a moment, older looking up, younger looking down. Then Richard bent and clapped his father on the shoulder before turning and walking back into the house.

“Night, Pa,” he tossed over his shoulder.

After the door swung shut, Caleb Harrow sat out on the porch of the house he’d built, looked out over his land, and cried. He wanted to throw a lit match to it all. What did any of it matter if some slip of paper could come and take his precious, dream-headed boy and turn him to a corpse or something worse? There was so much he couldn’t tell him then; how he wouldn’t be there to talk him through the afterward, how Richard would one day meet a man with blond hair and blue eyes who, in a war over fathers, would make him understand the cold, solid love Caleb bore, like the weight of a gun in the hand.


End file.
